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Improving Your Employees' English |
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Written by Jerel Bonner
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Simple Ideas for Your Employees to Improve Their English
A common question most foreign English teachers hear from their students is "How can I improve my English when there are not enough native speakers to practice with?" The fact is that there will never be enough native English speakers for them to practice with everyday. So who will they practice with? Themselves! According to some news articles, China is on track to becoming the largest English speaking country in the world by 2025. Between 200 and 600 million Chinese students, at different stages of their education or careers, are still studying English. It would be impossible for the Chinese Education Ministry to recruit even one percent of that number of native teachers to practice their English with. But there are many simple strategies to get your employees to practice English amongst themselves without burning a hole in your training budget.
Find their interests and areas they want to improve
The first thing you need to do is take a survey of what topics employees are interested in and where they want to improve. Do not make a complicated survey or they will not participate. Second, rule out things like listening to western music or watching Hollywood movies. This they can do in their own free time, and it is more important for their careers to focus on business English. From the survey takers, select the employees with the best English skills and give them the challenge of leading these projects using English only.
Solution # 1 Form a Employee Suggestion Committee
Many businesses have an employee suggestion program. If your organization already has one, this solution will be easy to implement. The key feature of this program is for the employees to do all related tasks in English. Such a program could function as follows:
1. Select between 5 - 7 employees to oversee the program
2. Distribute suggestion boxes throughout the work facility
3. Distribute English only suggestion forms
4. Evaluate employee suggestions in English
5. Work with management to implement the best suggestions
6. Award employees whose suggestions were accepted and saved the company money (senior management must determine the value of the awards)
Solution #2 Start a Reading Club
In today's high tech society, business stories abound, especially from your own company's website. Employees can read company press releases or financial stories. They can review job descriptions, which could help them learn more about career opportunities and corporate structures. They could read product literature or internal memos sent via email. The list of possibilities is endless. Here is a sample format for a reading club organization:
1. Meet twice a week during lunch
2. Everyone is made familiar with the article before meeting
3. Those that want to improve their pronunciation read out loud
4. Those that want to improve their listening should try to catch the key points and general meaning
5. As a group, they should make a vocabulary list of new words learned
6. As a group, they should discuss the key content of the story and give analysis on how it affects them
Once they get good at reading short stories they can move on to business magazines and hopefully business books.
Solution # 3 Start an English Listening Club.
As previously mentioned, the Internet has a vast pool of business stories for employees to listen to. The more they listen to these audio programs, the quicker their pronunciation and grammar will improve. To make this activity successful, it is recommended that participants have at least three up to date computers that can play all types of audio programs from the web. The employees should purchase their own MP3 players, so that they can listen to the stories while commuting to the office. The club would meet in a fashion similar to the reading group, with some small differences. For example:
1. Meet twice a week during lunch
2. Participants should have downloaded the designated audio file to their MP3 players before the meeting
3. As a group, they should make a vocabulary list of new words learned
4. As a group, they should discuss the key content of the story and give feedback on its implications for their work
Recommended sites for employees to select stories from:
- National Public Radio www.npr.org
- MarketPlace Live China http://marketplace.publicradio.org/features/china2006/archive.html
Solution # 4 Create an Monthly Office Newsletter
Employees enjoy learning the latest news in the office. Recent promotions and successful new projects are just a few types of stories that could be published in a monthly newsletter. With today's publishing tools, it is a breeze to put out a three or four page handout highlighting recent company achievements. Instituting this program can greatly assist those individuals that want to improve their English writing and editing skills. An additional bonus is that they will practice their spoken English as they interview their co-workers while preparing articles. They could even publish updates regarding the office's English improvement programs. Possible content for the journal could be:
1. English improvement club events
2. New projects under development
3. Business English stories and reviews
4. New employee profiles
5. Promotions and suggestions
6. Award recipients
In most cases, HR departments might not be able to get all of these programs started at the same time due to business needs and employee schedules. The important thing is to get something going, so that employees are thinking about improving themselves and using their English more actively. If companies can motivate employees to participate in even one such program, then their communication and business skills will improve faster when they attend the next round of business training.
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